The Los Angeles Times has named a new book editor to replace David Ulin: In another terse press release the paper announced rather joylessly that managing editor Jon Thurber will be switching to Ulin’s former desk.  Thurber had been ME for exactly one year, headquartered in the paper’s newsroom, and before that had been obituary editor for 11 years.

Editor Russ Stanton, author of the release, does not detail any literary or other cultural writing, nor any experience writing books or working in the book industry, in Thurber’s background, and does not otherwise explain why he got the job.

Most publishers advise their authors to suffer negative reviews in silence. But Melville House author Paul Berman says “I glance with pleasure at some harsh reviews” of his book, The Flight of the Intellectuals because “in the worst of them, is my best confirmation.”

Thus, in a flame-throwing commentary for the Wall Street Journal, Berman — who got some some rave reviews, too (such as this one, from the New York Times Book Review, and this one, from Slate columnist Ron Rosenbaum) says scathing reviews in the New Yorker, Foreign Affairs, and the National Interest decidedly prove the key points of his book:

You are not supposed to observe that Islamism is a modern, instead of an ancient, political tendency, which arose in a spirit of fraternal harmony with the fascists of Europe in the 1930s and ’40s.

You are not supposed to point out that Nazi inspirations have visibly taken root among present-day Islamists, notably in regard to the demonic nature of Jewish conspiracies and the virtues of genocide.

And you are not supposed to mention that, by inducing a variety of journalists and intellectuals to maintain a discreet and respectful silence on these awkward matters, the Islamist preachers and ideologues have succeeded in imposing on the rest of us their own categories of analysis.

For example, he notes something he details in the book: that several important Islamist leaders collaborated with the Nazis. Berman quotes many of them, such as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and the founders of the Muslim Brotherhood.

However,

The piece in Foreign Affairs insists that, to the mufti of Jerusalem, Hitler was merely a “convenient ally,” and it is “ludicrous” to imagine a deeper sort of alliance. Those in the National Interest and the New Yorker add that, in the New Yorker’s phrase, “unlikely alliances” with Nazis were common among anticolonialists.

… But these various efforts to minimize the significance of the Nazi-Islamist alliance ignore a mountain of documentary evidence, some of it discovered last year in the State Department archives by historian Jeffrey Herf, revealing links that are genuinely profound.

“Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases God, history and religion,” said the mufti of Jerusalem on Radio Berlin in 1944. And the mufti’s rhetoric goes on echoing today in major Islamist manifestos such as the Hamas charter and in the popular television oratory of Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi … “Oh Allah, count their numbers, and kill them, down to the very last one.” Foreign Affairs, the National Interest and the New Yorker have expended nearly 12,000 words in criticizing “Flight of the Intellectuals.” And yet, though the book hinges on a series of such genocidal quotations, not one of those journals has found sufficient space to reproduce even a single phrase.

Then there’s his defense of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, whom he calls “one of the world’s most eloquent enemies of the Islamist movement.”

Six years ago, an Islamist fanatic murdered Ms. Hirsi Ali’s filmmaking colleague, Theo van Gogh, and left behind a death threat, pinned with a dagger to the dead man’s torso, denouncing Ms. Hirsi Ali as an agent of Jewish conspirators. And yet, the New Yorker, in the course of an essay presenting various excuses for the Islamist-Nazi alliance of yesteryear, has the gall to explain that, if anyone needs a lecture on the history of anti-Semitism, it’s Ms. Hirsi Ali!

“Such is the temper of our moment,” Berman concludes. “Some of the intellectuals are indisputably in flight—eager to sneer at outspoken liberals from Muslim backgrounds, and reluctant to speak the truth about the Islamist reality.”

In a short review of Jaron Lanier’s You Are Not a Gadget, Nation magazine book editor John Palattella quotes one of the more bracing pieces of the book, which focuses on the “the hive mind spawned by the social-media technologies of web 2.0″ and what it means to the exploding forces of online advertising and for intellectual and political culture. According to Lanier, the predicament is that:

[T]he combination of hive mind and advertising has resulted in a new kind of social contract. The basic idea of this contract is that authors, journalists, musicians, and artists are encouraged to treat the fruits of their intellects and imaginations as fragments to be given away without pay to the hive mind. Reciprocity takes the form of self-promotion. Culture is to become precisely nothing but advertising.

Or, as Palattella refines the thought:

[E]ditors who justify not paying online contributors on the grounds that gratis articles provide invaluable exposure are not publishing journalism. They are grifters running editorial scams and killing journalism in the process.

The Rolling Stone issue with Michael Hastings' hot Afghanistan article also has a naked Lady GaGa on the cover.

The article that everyone is talking about, “The Runaway General” by Michael Hastings, won’t even be on newsstands until Friday. The piece, a profile of Stanley A. McChrystal, went live on the Rolling Stone website Tuesday, but by then it was already the talk of the town — Washington, especially — after being leaked to a number of interested parties by Rolling Stone itself. And then the piece got the biggest response of all: Obama forced McChrystal to Washington on Wednesday to explain his comments to the magazine and then, after getting that explanation, fired him.

Even before McChrystal’s firing, Hastings, a former Newsweek reporter, was shocked by the response to his piece. In an interview he said “We end up ignoring Afghanistan, so I’m quite surprised it’s creating such a stir. I knew I had some decent material to work with, but I’m surprised at the level of involvement.” In the days since, Hastings’ surprise has surely deepened, but his role in McChrystal’s sacking seems to have made him ambivalent about the entire situation, if his most recent two pieces (here and here) are any indication.

Commentators online have compared the swift reaction to another great Rolling Stone scoop: Carl Bernstein’s 1977 revelation that hundreds of American journalists had been working for the Central Intelligence Agency, which led to congressional hearings in 1978. But the case of the McChrystal scoop seems somehow different: after all, the General was fired before the essay was even on stands. There’s even a debate ongoing about the how the piece was published online: it seems a number of mainstream news outlets (Time and Politico) ran the piece early and illegally–that is, before Rolling Stone had made the decision to publish online. The media, it seems, couldn’t wait until there was a legitimate version of the story to link to. And then there’s speed of the Administration’s reaction to the story, which is remarkable, even in the age of the Internet.

David Ulin

One of the nation’s most esteemed book section editors, David Ulin of the Los Angeles Times, is no longer a book section editor: the newspaper announced late yesterday that Ulin “is shifting gears and taking on a new role with the Los Angeles Times as book critic.”

Ulin came to the job five years ago, and quickly established the section as something outside the echo chamber, paying attention to books from indies and new writers in particular, shepherding a sharp and impressive team of editors and regular critics, and creating a lively website for the book section.

Considering that it’s one of the country’s top newspapers, the Times‘ announcement of the end of Ulin’s remarkable tenure is disappointingly thin on information. There is no mention of why Ulin is “switching positions,” who will replace him, or even if he will, indeed, be replaced. This is an announcement, after all, from a paper that had lately cut that formerly robust book department down to two full-time people — one of whom was Ulin.

Is this the end of the L.A. Times book section?

UPDATE: David Ulin writes in to Moby with the good news that the move was at his own instigation as he seeks to return to full-time writing. He also says he’s happy the newspaper has agreed to let him stay on as a critic, and that the book section will continue with a new editor. Our apologies for having pointed toward inaccurate conclusions, and hats off to the L.A. Times and Ulin for their efforts to stick by Mother Literature.

The San Jose Mercury News has a long interview with Tim Cahill, the noted travel writer and one of the founders of Outside magazine, the “Rolling Stone spinoff dedicated to outdoor adventures.” Cahill left his staff job at Outside in 2000 and is quite candid about changes at the magazine, though he’s still on the masthead (or thinks he is):

I don’t know that I need to read an article on bicycle fashions. The cover stories are so clearly, cynically meant to sell magazines: “The 10 best outdoor towns in America.” How come they’re always different? But on the other hand, in this economy, just staying alive is honorable, I guess.

Asked whether his 1991 “Kuwait is Burning” piece would be published today, Cahill responds that “it’s very difficult for me to think of an outlet. Outside might do it. Esquire might do it. It’s all very up in the air for the kind of literary nonfiction writing that I like to think I do. You have very short travel blogs, and I think there’s a split among travel writers: the service-oriented writers will say, ‘Well, the reader wants to read about his trip, not yours.’ Whereas I say, the reader just wants to read a good story and to maybe learn something.”

On a much more personal note, Cahill also reflects on how travel writing affected his home life over the years and the impact that the recent loss of his wife has had on his writing:

I haven’t mentioned this, and I don’t want to sound all poor-pitiful me “… But I really did work pretty hysterically for about 40 years, traveling all the time, and it’s hard on your relationships at home. And I finally started going places with my wife, less dangerous places, doing more thoughtful stories. And she was killed in an auto accident two years ago, April 28. A one-car rollover. And I haven’t done much good writing since.

Life on Grub Street ain't what it used to be ...

“I’d like to talk about a meltdown, one that’s occurring not on Wall Street but Grub Street, that storied realm of writers, booksellers, bohemians and hacks,” says The Nation’s books editor (and Melville House author) John Palattella in a compelling essay.

… Though the problems on Grub Street are slight compared with the hardships that have befallen millions of people thanks mostly to Wall Street, they are matters of cultural importance. On Grub Street, for nearly a decade, and especially during the past four years, people have been wailing, rending their garments and otherwise voicing their displeasure over the deterioration of books coverage in the United States. (The meltdown on Grub Street coincided with the release of the Kindle in 2007, but the gales of anxiety and gusts of delirium stirred up in book publishing by digital readers are a different story.) The laments have focused mostly on newspaper books coverage because, rightfully or not, it has long been regarded as an accurate barometer of the delicate climate of literary life. Who hasn’t heard someone in a bookstore or a friend ask, “Have you read that novel the Times Book Review raved about”?

Nonetheless, Palattella wonders, “Is it true, as many people who have commented on the matter have claimed, that the recent decline in newspaper books coverage is a problem for the culture at large, and also representative of larger cultural problems? Are review sections disappearing or shrinking because they can’t turn a profit? Or is it because they can’t compete with material originating on the web?”

In fact, he posits something downright inspiring:

Despite the turmoil and doubts, I think there’s no better time than the present to be covering books. The herd instinct is nearly extinct: newspapers inadvertently killed it when they scaled back on books coverage en masse; and the web, for all its crowds and their supposed wisdom, is a zone of unfederated cantons. The field is wide open. If you can’t take chances now, if in such a climate you can’t risk seeking an air legitimate and rare, when can you?

In a recent commentary about Newsweek, Slate “Press Box” columnist Jack Shafer here quotes Newsweek editor Jon Meacham on the slow decline of weekly news magazines:

What’s happening now is that headlines are delivered by the Web. That has pushed newspapers to become more like the newsmagazines were in ‘82, and it’s pushed the newsmagazines to produce a monthly-quality product on a weekly basis, and it’s pushed the monthlies into the place of the great quarterlies, and now the quarterlies have become books.

But, as Shafer writes, “The problem with Meacham’s musical-chairs analogy is that he neglects to mention that a chair is removed as each dance begins and that whenever the music stops, a player gets bounced from the game. This week’s loser looks to be Newsweek.”

But what about books? Will they be bounced from the news game some day soon?

In some ways, they already have been. The Internet sucks up time that might otherwise be spent reading books, a fact that’s obvious to any obsessive reader who spends time online. But if the question is how books fit into the news cycle, and the economy of the news, the answer is more ambiguous. Books about current events still occasionally drive the conversation in a big way: Game Change by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin is one recent example; it was released in January and has sold more than 400,000 copies — a circulation that would make many weekly and monthly magazines jealous. (Though perhaps not Newsweek.) Add this to an old trend: journalists like Bob Woodward, people who long ago left the drudge of writing for daily newspapers to write long, news-breaking books.

In 2006, Jack Shafer called attention to the success of such authors and their “newsbooks,” titles that straddle “the space between contemporary history and daily journalism and [are] usually hooked to Washington and politics.” It’s “the triumph of a journalism genre,” he wrote.

Is it possible that big, complicated books will outlive the newsweekly business? For now, it seems so. Though, as Shafer says, something else might simply come along and bump it out of the game.

Hampton Sides at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, site of the King assassintaion

You would think that all that could be known about the assassination of Martin Luther King would be on the record already, and of course there have been innumerable books detailing the facts. Yet the new bestseller Hellhound on His Trail, by Hampton Sides, contains “a mostly unmined vein of historical detail that truly brought his book — and the petty-criminal-turned-assassin James Earl Ray — to life,” observes Chris Talbot in an Associated Press wire story.

Sides credits the private archive put together by Vince Hughes, who was a dispatcher for the Memphis Police Department, on duty the night King was shot there. As the AP report explains,

He kept a copy of the radio tape from that night as a curio. In time, he decided to transfer it to CD to preserve it. A friend heard about what he was doing.

“He gave me what he had and I started crawling through people’s attics and going down to locations here, there and yon, gathering all sorts of documents and trying to bring all the investigative material to one place,” Hughes said.

He has a set of the nearly unredacted FBI case file, as well as those for investigations by Scotland Yard and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Many pieces in the collection can be found nowhere else.

It now amounts to a massive archive of “20,000 documents, recordings, photographs and other material,” says the report — a treasure trove for Sides.

When Sides needed more information about Ray’s attempts to secure a false identity while on the run in Toronto, he asked Hughes, “Do you have anything on that?”

And Hughes replied: “Have I ever! Here’s the picture that was taken at this photographic studio. Here’s the other photograph that wasn’t used. Look at what he’s wearing. Look at those glasses. Those are fake glasses, those horn-rimmed glasses. He’s trying out a new look.’”

The article doesn’t really explain how the archive was so unknown previously, although it does note that Hughes “is protective of his collection.” He tells the AP, “I’m really trying to stay away from the folks that are looking for conspiracy and those kind of things. … But serious researchers I’m happy to make it available to them.”

James Risen

“The Obama administration is seeking to compel a writer to testify about his confidential sources for a 2006 book about the Central Intelligence Agency, a rare step that was authorized by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.,” according to a report by Charlie Savage in the New York Times, a report that has its share of irony: The writer in question is James Risen, and the book is his State of War: The Secret History of the C.I.A. and the Bush Administration, in which he uncovered the fact that the Bush administration had been conducting a warrantless surveillance program on US citizens; Risen, a Times reporter himself, published the book because the Times at first refused to run his reports.

However according to Savage, Risen has been subpoenaed “to provide documents and to testify May 4 before a grand jury in Alexandria, Va., about his sources for a chapter … [that] … largely focuses on problems with a covert C.I.A. effort to disrupt alleged Iranian nuclear weapons research.”

Risen referred questions to his attorney, who would only say, “He intends to honor his commitment of confidentiality to his source or sources. We intend to fight this subpoena.”

Risen won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the case when the Times eventually ran his report.